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Vancouver planning manager promises developers meeting there will be “more clarity” about what they pay city for community benefits

November 18th, 2012 · 19 Comments

My story from last week. Sorry, forgot to post earlier, but comment away, if you can tear yourselves from the TransLink service optimization post (Yikes, 263 comments and counting.)

Article posted in full on next page

November 15, 2012

Vancouver planning chief promises clarity

By FRANCES BULA

Brian Jackson says the city will come up with a set percentage for city benefits such as parks and daycares

Vancouver’s new planning chief – faced with growing revolts in the city from both major builders and resident groups over development – has promised a more open system for figuring out what a community should get in benefits from big projects.

“I know that we expect a lot from you,” Brian Jackson told a packed meeting of 500 at an Urban Development Institute lunch. “The demand for facilities and services in Vancouver far exceeds other municipalities.”

He said the city would come up with a set percentage for how much it will ask most developers going through a rezoning to give back for city benefits such as social housing, parks, cultural spaces, daycares and other services.

He also said the city, in a joint task force with the developers’ organization, would reduce the time that negotiations take.

As well, the task force will work to ensure that most community benefits go back into the projects from which the developer contributions are coming. And the city will establish defined heights and densities for new buildings in whole areas rather than individual projects.

Mr. Jackson, who started his job in September, six months after the previous director of planning was fired, also begged developers to help the city communicate more with residents.

He said city staff are being drowned out by residents’ new capacity to get their message across through social media when they oppose a particular project.

“We are being out-tweeted, out-Facebooked and out-blogged,” Mr. Jackson said, on the eve of a rally at City Hall by residents unhappy about developments in Dunbar, Oakridge, the West End, the Downtown Eastside and elsewhere.

For almost two decades, Vancouver saw a phenomenal burst of development on its converted industrial lands downtown with relatively little public opposition.

Developers, as well, seemed relatively satisfied to negotiate their contributions to the city. Concord Pacific provided a seawall, parks, daycares and space for social housing with little visible tussling in the 1990s.

But as developers ran out of room downtown and started moving to more established neighbourhoods in the past few years, public opposition started to mount.

As well, the city’s system of negotiating with developers to exchange extra density for community benefits came under more scrutiny.

Both developers and residents started to object to the fact that there were no clear rules or explanations of who paid what in each project.

Mr. Jackson said developers are usually asked to contribute 75 to 85 per cent of what they gain in land value when their property is rezoned for more density.

But the chair of the Urban Development Institute, which is getting accountants to scrutinize the deals the city has approved in recent years, said the range is more like 70 to 100 per cent.

Brian McCauley said that kind of variation is hard on developers. He is hopeful that the new task force and Mr. Jackson can come up with a better system.

“It’s not really so much about the money,” he said after Mr. Jackson’s speech. “If we can just understand the rules of engagement. What we’ve experienced is a very inconsistent process.”

The institute has become increasingly vocal in recent months about a system that it says has no transparency.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Participated in the Mount Pleasant Workshop. My observations here

    http://wp.me/p2FnNe-1M

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    “We are being out-tweeted, out-Facebooked and out-blogged,” Mr. Jackson said, on the eve of a rally at City Hall by residents unhappy about developments in Dunbar, Oakridge, the West End, the Downtown Eastside and elsewhere.

    Who’s “we”?

    It is a city planner’s duty to influence public decision making in the public interest, not act as the promotional department and public defender of a particular development.

  • Westender1

    A light at the end of the tunnel?

    “And the city will establish defined heights and densities for new buildings in whole areas rather than individual projects.”

    It’s almost like “planning.” I hope as part of this new-fangled process, the public will be consulted in a meaningful way.

    The next question will be whether the City actually sticks to the heights and densities defined for these “whole areas” or whether it continues to make deals on individual sites for “exceptional circumstances” and “iconic buildings.”

  • boohoo

    Hmmm, just like I suggested here: http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/debate-about-to-begin-on-development-charges-that-pay-for-community-facilities/

    Why Vancouver thinks it is so special and different is beyond me.

  • Rick

    “We are being out-tweeted, out-Facebooked and out-blogged,” Mr. Jackson said, on the eve of a rally at City Hall by residents unhappy about developments in Dunbar, Oakridge, the West End, the Downtown Eastside and elsewhere.

    Poor babies. If they did their job properly, rather than act as what can only be termed with some irony, “developmentally challenged”, then there would be little for the mere inhabitants of the city to complain about.

  • Trish French

    Speaking as an ex-Asst Director of Planning, I will be interested to see how the City moves to a standard charge for Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) that are currently negotiated for each rezoning. There is no legal authority in the Vancouver Charter for CACs per se, as there is for Development Cost Levies (DCLs), a levy that all developments (not just rezonings) pay on a per square foot basis. (DCLs can only be used for a limited range of purposes–transportation, replacement low cost housing, daycare, and parks–so CACs widen the scope to pay for community facilities like libraries, community centres, artist studios etc as well.)
    In the 90’s the City was sued over CACs on a Downtown condo project by an owner (a lawyer) in a neighbouring project. It was settled out of court, but a senior City lawyer advised staff that if it had gone to court, the City might well have lost both the case and the ability to negotiate CACs altogether. We were told that the legal basis of CACs is Council’s ability, in considering an individual rezoning, to take into account offers by the developer in cash or in kind that would assist in mitigating the impact of the rezoning or addressing deficiencies in the neighbourhood. He advised planners to take care not to even talk about CACs as if they were a routinely charged fee, levy, tax or whatever. I often think of what ex City Manager Ken Dobell once called CACs—“Consenting Adult Contracts”.
    This is not to say that there aren’t lots of improvements to be made in the messy negotiating process. And there is also a need to be able to incorporate amenity-type charges into zoning districts, the way some other municipalities have done. I know some work has been done on the latter, but I don’t know if it got very far.

  • Brian

    Rick #5:

    I think its a little naive to just suggest that if planners just did everything right, no one would complain. Regardless of how you feel Vancouver’s planners are handling there will always be complaints. That’s because planners make decisions in a very complex system that affects a very large group of people. Complaints are not a sign of failure, but an opportunity for communication. I think that Mr. Jackson highlights that social communication networks can drown out City Hall, which is counterpoductive because it prevents planners from showing the public why they feel their plan is beneficial, misquided as they may be sometimes.

  • Glissando Remmy

    Thought of The Day

    “Brian Jackson took the developer’s side and that of his employer… City of Vision Vancouver (at least that’s how they see it) because he didn’t really wanted to… Blow his Job!”

    The problem I see with City’s recent MO is that they approach the public only in virtual reality, meanwhile dealing with the developers in “brick and mortar” short, jerky spurts.
    City of Vancouver planners should not be out-twitted, out-facebooked or out-blogged. Because that’s not supposed to be what they should be doing at work. Not in their job description!

    And BTW, I’ll second TOAB #2…

    “Who’s “we”?
    It is a city planner’s duty to influence public decision making in the public interest, not act as the promotional department and public defender of a particular development.”

    Ask yourself that question, Brian!

    “Who’s ‘We’?”

    Than take a day or two off. Relax.
    Answer with sincerity, courage, and respect for your true master, the public.
    And maybe, just maybe, the Vancouver Mob will spare you from whistling along:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoaktW-Lu38

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Thanks for the background, Trish. There are two issues that play into some of the ideas raised by yourself and others here:

    (1) Tax Increment Financing—which the City was always able to levy; and which the Community Act empowers all BC municipalities to levy.

    (2) Urban design plans (UDP) that show maximum build out—slam dunk, that’s it—along with all the other bits: transit, parks, squares, revitalized streets, and new district designations.

    The TIF is like a mortgage. A portion of the taxes collected in one area are set aside for a specified civic project (supposedly a civic project not qualifying under a DCLs). TIFs can run for 10 or 20 years, though typically they are financed in 10-year terms that can be renewed.

    Markets love them. They go by the name “Muni Bonds” in the U.S.

    Urban Design Plans are something totally foreign in our city it would seem to me. The idea that we would specify and map out intensification appears anathema to the planning culture for reasons that perhaps you can shed some light on.

    Both measures, it seems to me, would add certainty and transparency, thus easing inflationary pressures. These sought for results would increase in proportion to UDP transparency is my impression.

    And both ideas can work in tandem. The UDP would be the basis on which the TIF is calculated. The public work shown in the plan would be paid for by a TIF. Furthermore, the monies for the TIF would come from new taxes collected from new development in the district.

    Thus we set up a situation where we create comparative advantage in one area with investments in municipal infrastructure, then channel some of the new revenues to pay for the investment.

    Add the final ingredients and we have a workable solution for all the neighbourhoods that keeps hands clean and things transparent at city hall: the fee-simple row house, and trolley bus rapid transit on revitalized arterials.

    The fee-simple row houses can be built by anyone: small firm, medium or large. Thus, the competitiveness that has been taken out of the market by the giant towers might again return.

    The transportation implementation supports the creation of walkable neighbourhoods which in turn support a higher level of local shopping and business revenue. Furthermore, the transportation implementation can be used to revitalize the street, adding support for fronting residential, walking, biking as well as cars & transit.

  • Frances Bula

    @Trish. As always, a fount of information. Interesting to hear this background on CACs.

  • Rick

    Brian #7

    Having worked in the field for more than 25 years, I would accept cynical, even disillusioned, but certainly not naive.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    In Vancouver the key example for our failure to embrace ‘good’ urabnism—or at least to do it in a timely and orderly manner (i.e. thru planning)—is the Cambie corridor.

    We managed to plan a modern subway system with an elevated section in Richmond, where the geo-technics put the water table essentially at grade.

    Yet, we failed to see this massive investment in infrastructure by all levels of government as “an engine for change”.

    I remember photographing the construction setting up on Cambie with high-end, single family houses in the background, and thinking to myself, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

    Then, the job went from bored tunnel to cut-and-cover. The disruption of the merchants never figured in the plans. Businesses were lost; lives were needlessly disrupted. Lawsuits were prosecuted and won against government.

    I remember photographing Cambie Street and Robson Street on Boxing Day one and two years before the Olympics. You could shoot a cannon down one; you could hardly drive a car down the other for all the pedestrians.

    But we couldn’t imagine two “Robsonstrassas” in our city. When the “revitalization” of Cambie commercial strip was complete, no additional functionality was added for pedestrians, or for social mixing. Some bobbles were put up on some light posts. I still can’t figure out the choice of location… Did you have to pay to have one go up in front of your business?

    Then, a decade or so later, we “planned” Cambie. It was Towerization pure and simple. No reference to 300-foot wide streets elsewhere in the western world (on Google Cambie is 154-feet —my Mac still can’t get out all the info that’s locked into Vanmap).

    I physically measured the width of the medians in the centre of the street before construction began. The medians, the most characteristic feature of Cambie, and Vancouver’s sole entry into the turn of the century City Beautiful movement, have shrunk.

    They have been eaten into by asphalt, treated as land banks for creating future car space. We can engineer streets for traffic alright; but we are still not designing neighbourhoods for people.

    We are not designing neighbourhoods to support a higher level of social functioning in the West End; in the East End (aka DTES); on the West side; in Granview Woodlands (where Commercial Drive—and every the other of the 11 drives found there—is a gem); and in Mount Pleasant—Vancouver’s hot bed of Panama Canal era urbanism.

    Towerization, on the other hand, is beating down every door in every neighbourhood and heating up the real estate market. This keeps up we won’t have a middle class in a decade or two.

    That’s why I call it ‘old’ paradigm planning. We are stuck in the Sixties. Our imaginations are full of soaring height and asphalt. Most of us have never experienced living in a walkable neighbourhood, so we resist shifting paradigm.

    However, unless we correct course we risk experiencing life in a Banana Republic. Except our discounted wages will be in retail, not fruit agriculture.

  • Brian

    Rick #11:

    I don’t mean to insult you or your experience. Given your 25 years in the field and possible cynicism associated with it, wouldn’t you agree that there is no way to please everybody all at once?

  • Rick

    Brian – for the most part true, though the optimist in me continues to think that if the planning department actually listened to all stakeholders, then they could at least come very close.

    However, I think you’ll note from the tenor of the majority of responses on this and other sub-forums of the blog, there is rampant distrust as to just who the Planning Department HAS decided to please.

  • Everyman

    @TOAB 2
    It certainly reveals an “us vs. them” mentality. Perhaps Council and the Planning Department should take notice of what residents are tweeting, blogging etc., rather than try to “overwhelm” those voices.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    @ Rick & Brian

    And it is not just about ‘pleasing’ the stakeholders anymore.

    As Glissy points out, I was shocked to hear the City referred to as a stakeholder at a recent Mount Pleasant (City) Implementation Committee meeting. That old structure where we establish a free market where competition settles the winners and the losers, and we empower government to act as the referees while at the same time looking after those values that a competitive market cannot support—that structure seems now at risk of crumbling.

    Second, the issue is not so much about ‘pleasing’ as delivering competent product. I see a set of concrete urban values that can provide the common ground for a vital and diverse community like ours. Problem is… that vision is not broadly supported.

    I’ll return with a final comment to “link the dots” between my first and second posts above, and pose tentative answers to a final question:

    Is there a connection between CACs and the runaway real estate prices in our region?

  • F.H.Leghorn

    @Lewis#12: When Harcourt was elected Mayor he got the tour of all the various departments in the city. While being briefed by City Engineer Bill Curtis he was shown a map of the Cambie area. The boulevards were marked “Future roadway”. Harcourt says “What’s this?”. Curtis hastily rolled it up, remarking “Wrong map”.

  • Karen Cooper

    Presentation link is at http://udi.bc.ca/events/udi/archive-udi-vancouver-lunch-brian-jackson-city-vancouver

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    FHL—”Wrong map”, that’s a beauty!

    My worries about the CACs in particular, and teh way we are conducting neighbourhood planning in our City today are roughly these:

    (1) CACs have been discounted by the market place and are priced into the cost of the new units.

    (2) New units set the floor of the market, and in turn this raises the prices of existing stock (i.e. there is an inflationary side to the CACs).

    (3) Because they are negotiated ‘behind closed doors’, new development is put outside the orbit of local plans and meaningful public consultation (there is an unintended erosion of public trust, perception of professionalism, and corruption of the political process—remember the Rize).

    (4) Having manufactured this successful ‘end run’ around public process, planning in the post EXPO-86 and 2012 Olympics period has gone from bad to worse.

    (5) The CAC projects tend to be very large, and thus the big players are favoured over the small construction firms.

    How would it have been different on Cambie if there had been: (1) An urban design plan drawn at the same time as the RAV Line (Canada Line) was being planned; and (2) a TIFF or bond issue associated with the project?

    First, lets underline that the TIFF cannot replace all the other funding mechanisms. Regardless the size of the TIFF, not using the TIFF amounts to pouring gasoline on the bonfire.

    RAV was moving already by 2002-2004. Thus it is feasible to think that we could be seeing the first 10-year bond either maturing or being rolled over. These past ten years have seen some of the lowest interest rates in my lifetime, so the timing could not have been better.

    While it is unreasonable to suggest that all the construction would have been focused on Cambie, it is not unreasonable to think that an increment of the construction over the last ten years could have been relocated to Cambie with positive results in both places (less density in the place it is now, more density on Cambie).

    The only part of the argument that we could not have predicted 10 years ago is that the Canada Line would not be wanting for patrons.

    Nevertheless, an important reason to densify Cambie as a walkable district with human-scale build-out is to have the population within easy walking distance of transit, QE, Oakridge, and the recreation facilities that were built next to Nat Bailey.

    By far the greatest missed opportunity was the hands-on experience of building ‘good’ urbanism from the ground up.

    The last 10 years would have been like a demonstration project in urbanism showing us how to balance density with places designed to enhance social functioning.